Virtual AMPLIFY! An Online Celebration of Women+ in Performance

The Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival presented Virtual AMPLIFY! An Online Celebration of Women+ in Performance livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Saturday 18 April 2020 at 6 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC-7) / 8 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC-5) / 9 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC-4) / 19 April 2020 2 a.m. BST (London, UTC+1).

Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival (baWTF) centers Women+ & Non-Binary Theatre Artists with Virtual Amplify!

Bay Area superstar performer and comedy legend Marga Gomez will host this showcase of the work by a sample of artists scheduled to perform at the live event at a future date, including:

• Fauxnique, the first cis-gender woman to win a major drag (queen) performance http://www.fauxnique.net/
• "Remnants of the Ghetto", spoken word poetry performed by LadiRev https://www.instagram.com/ladirev/
• Instigator Patricia Miller
• Comedian Irene Tu https://www.irenetu.com/
• A selection from Nekeia Rideout’s solo show InThisBody about Black identity and living in a Black body
• Susan-Jane Harrison performing a selection from her solo show Mind the Gap, about privacy/public image and finding one's voice(s) https://www.susanjaneharrison.com/, and
• a brand new, written for this event, half-play, half-dance party Writer Boogie featuring 4 playwrights (announced on a rolling basis this week) and a ton of woman+-created music to dance to!!

A time-specific schedule will be posted at www.baWTF.com/amplifySome programming may be not suitable for children - family friendly performances, such as Writer Boogie, will be noted as such on the schedule.

Amplify! is baWTF’s 24-hour celebration of women+ in performance, originally scheduled for April 18-19, 2020 at Brava Theater Center in San Francisco. Due to Shelter-in-Place orders, that live performance will be rescheduled once we are allowed to safely return to the theaters as both theatermakers and audiences.

The Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival launched just when Covid-19 shut down all live performances. We are following the example set by many of our participating theaters, such as Aurora Theatre Company, Fuse Theatre, Shotgun Players, and City Lights Theater Company as well as North Carolina’s Women’s Theatre Festival (our sister festival), and pivoting to streaming performances on the web. Our podcast, Amplify! Artist Conversations, was launched in early April to connect with and support the work of our Amplify! Performers and collaborators as they navigate life as an artist under COVID-19.

The AMPLIFY! Curatorial and producing team includes Tina D’Elia, Mary Guzmán, Erin Merritt, Cheri Miller, Patricia Miller, Ariella Wolfe and Festival Producer Susan Shay.

About The Bay Area Women's Theatre Festival
The Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival (baWTF) aims to highlight gender parity, diversity and inclusion on- and off-stage in all 9 Bay Area counties. The festival spans International Women’s Day, International Transgender Day of Visibility and SWAN DAY (Support Women Artists Now). All participating theater works are written and directed by women+** or non-binary theater practitioners and at least 50% of the performers and the designers will be women+ or non-binary artists. The festival’s producing team (called The Instigators) is led by Michaela Goldhaber (Lead Instigator) and Susan Shay (Festival Producer and baWTF Managing Director). baWTF is a member of Intersection for the Arts and is funded by WomenArts, RHE Charitable Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation and hundreds of individual supporters.

For more on the festival, please visit www.bayareawomenstheatrefestival.com

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.